The present invention generally relates to databases and more specifically to apparatus and methods for providing an interface and design tools for diagnosing problems in a database system.
Immediate and accurate diagnosis of problems is important to properly maintain the database systems. As the size and complexity of database systems increase, the likelihood that problems may result also increases. The increased size and complexity, however, also often increases the time and complexity of designing, deploying, and monitoring of database diagnostic tools.
Diagnosing problems in a database may be a very involved task that makes use of a variety of different metrics and database state information. A database administrator (DBA) needs a great deal of expertise to know what diagnostic information is needed to diagnose and resolve a database problem.
Traditionally, when a database problem occurs a DBA is alerted of a problem and then works with database tools to gather and analyze database state information to determine a cause of the problem. Database problems may often be sporadic and may occur or manifest intermittently or randomly and often only for brief periods of time. A DBA may not be available or may only have a small window of time to gather useful database state information in order to accurately diagnose the problem. The type of analysis performed may be subjective in that the DBA may subjectively choose the types of analysis and data to gather to determine a cause of a problem. In many instances the DBA may not have enough time or expertise to run the best diagnostic tool or procedure during the time window when a database problem is occurring resulting in no diagnostics data or diagnostics data that may be irrelevant to the database problem. A DBA may not have time to perform an analysis or may not be able to perform the preferred analysis for the particular database problem.
Accordingly, improved systems, apparatuses, and methods for diagnosing problems are desired.